The Petersen Automotive Museum looks to upgrade

The Petersen Automotive Museum sits on prime real estate at the intersection of Fairfax and Wilshire in Los Angeles. It's located in the car capital of the world.

Still, it isn't the best auto museum. It isn't in the top five globally. But, "it could be, it should be, it can be, it will be," said Peter Mullin, who last week chaired his first Petersen board meeting, at which the museum's future began to take shape.

Mullin became the museum's chairman last month. With the Petersen's 20-year anniversary set for the summer of 2014, he and museum co-chairs Bruce Meyer and David Sydorick have laid out an ambitious plan to completely revitalize the museum building, its collection, its vision and its standing in Los Angeles. The goal is to turn the Petersen into an Los Angeles must-see, an equal to the Getty or Disneyland.

The exterior of the building will be overhauled by "a major, major design firm that has been responsible for some of the most leading-edge inspiring buildings in the world," Mullin said. Its new shape may be reminiscent of an automobile.

The collection, which has focused on Southern California cars and culture since the Petersen opened, will expand with classic car loans that fit the museum's new mandate to present vehicles as art and to include more vehicles of European descent. The rare Delahayes, Bugattis and other French classics Mullin displays at his own automotive museum, in Oxnard, will rotate in to the Petersen, as will "any car that exists," said Mullin, who intends to leverage his own reputation, and that of his co-chairs, as esteemed car collectors.

Future exhibits are likely to focus on "cliffs and breakthroughs," such as the shift from horse-drawn carriage to car, and on so-called disruptive technologies, such as electric and solar propulsion.

It's a tall order to accomplish in little more than a year, but "it's doable," said Mullin, a native Angeleno who also serves on the boards of Occidental College and Hospital of the Good Samaritan, is chairman of the Music Center Foundation and president of the American Bugatti Club.

At 72, Mullin took on the Petersen challenge because "L.A.'s standing in the world is important to me," he said.

"All the assets are here: The building, the location, the focus, the cars, the capacity of car people to fund a dream. I like to dream, and I like to execute dreams."

The $35 to $40 million that Mullin said is needed to fund the Petersen's ambitious plans will come from various sponsors, "a serious capital campaign," Mullin said, and the estate of Bob Petersen, the magazine publisher and hot rod enthusiast who founded the museum in 1994.

Whether the Petersen's revitalization will accomplish what Mullin intends won't be known until it's done. Like all museums, the Petersen faces multiple challenges, including a wealth of alternate entertainment options in Southern California and major demographic and cultural shifts that impact a museum's ability to draw visitors.

Core museum goers are typically white, well educated and affluent, said Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums in Washington D.C. Transportation museums in particular tend to appeal to older white men, she said, yet U.S. demographics are shifting to a majority minority.

While museum attendance has remained steady throughout the economic downturn, Merritt says younger people are growing up "with different ways of engaging with cultural experiences."

"Museums overall have more different kinds of competition than they had even 10 years ago because there are so many emergent forms of cultural consumption," Merritt said, citing YouTube videos and pop-up shops.

"You have to have a compelling reason for people to get in their cars and drive to see it if there are things that require a smaller commitment of time and energy that they also find rewarding."

Mullin said many of the Petersen's current attendees are "young. They're Hispanic, they're people interested in new technologies."

And the Petersen intends to draw more of them in the future.

To that end, the Petersen is likely to benefit from what's happening across the street. The former May Company building, under the guidance of Walt Disney Co. chief executive Robert Iger, is also being transformed into a new museum of film run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mullin acknowledges it will take time for Petersen fans to embrace and accept the changes that are soon to become a reality. "Change and growth always have different implications depending on who you are," he said.

The new Petersen, however, holds the power "to change the view of Los Angeles in a permanent way."